Deconstructionist Or Cubist? MOMA To Design, Build A Fire Station

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We don’t know art, but we know what we like: we like it when our house doesn’t burn down.

Fire protection and modern art don’t often go hand in hand — it’s hard to slide down a deconstructionist fire pole, and cubists hoses are a bitch to use — but this is the City That Knows How to get its Museum of Modern Art to pay for a new firehouse.

In all, it seems like a fairly sweet deal: the museum gets the rights to the station, located across the street from its main location, and thereby gets to continue a $400 million-plus expansion (perhaps we can give the MOMA the rights to the Academy of Art, as well). In return, the cash-strapped Fire Department gets to sit back and oversee the MOMA buy the land, dig the hole and build a “state-of-the-art” fire station from scratch to “its specifications.”

The Fire Department puts the tally of the new station at a grand total for $14 million, and a department spokeswoman hasn’t yet responded to a phone call and e-mail asking where the rest of the money will come from.

What is clear is that the SFFD’s current Station 1 is no good. The building is about 100 years old, hasn’t been remodeled since the 1950s, and is, in sum, a museum piece by itself. Maybe the MOMA will leave it as is, and add it to the collection: “Untitled, San Francisco Fire Department.” If not, we bet there’s a grant someone can get to cover it with plastic wrap or furniture or something.